A Short Narrative In the Successful Reduction
by Rosetta Penn
Summary: ...of his Supreme Dark Lordship to Tears. Sorry the site thinks my tittle is too long. Short little story inspired by the list on mugglenet: 123 Ways To Annoy, Harass, Confuse, or Generally Scare Lord Voldemort


So here you are lying on your bed in Death Eaters Central, face pressed against your pillow, sobbing your heart out and thinking, "That's it! This time he's just gone too far!"

You're referring to Voldemort, of course, the big meanie with the eye infection (you've offered him eye drops several times but he just gets all huffy and storms off). He never pays any attention to you! It's always "Bella, you're looking mightily stunning tonight" or, "Why Severus, you're snarky attitude is positively delightful" or "Lucius your hair is absolutely radiant." Even Yaxsly get more attention then you. Yaxsly! The man doesn't even have a first name for crying out loud!

And tonight…tonight…uhg! Not only did he tear apart The Ugly Duckling storybook you were trying to read to him, cancel the special interview you'd scheduled with Rita Skeeter, and not let you wear the mask you'd spent hours decorating with green glitter, but when you got back from the mission he completely flipped out and said that if you ran out of a fight with the Order screaming "Foiled, foiled again!" in his presence one more time he would personally Crucio you until you made the Longbottem case look merciful! That is just not the sort of thing bestest of buddies should be saying to one another!

So that's it, you're done! No more extra hours coming up with brilliantly evil schemes (most of them involving sacrificing Draco Malfoy to "the cause"), no more personally composed Death Eater theme songs, and definitely no more gift baskets full of teddy bears. By the end of tomorrow you're going to have him in such a fit that he'll wish he had never been born. And all it's going to take, you think rubbing your hands together in gleeful anticipation, is a few pranks, some strategic planning, and a boy with a lightning bolt scar.

To start with you decide to sabotage the upcoming "brainstorm for ways to kill Harry Potter meeting". However for an effective sabotage you decide preparations really must be made ahead of time. First, you make little nametags for everyone attending. For Voldemort you write one out in big pink bubble letters reading "Voldie", and cover it with hearts and peace signs. At the last moment you decide that's probably not going to go over too well with him, so you make a back-up one titled "The-man-who-let-the-boy-live-seven times".

Second, you find Nagini, who's always lurking about the corridors, and transfigure her into a fabulous snakeskin purse. Inside your fashionable new handbag you pack the necessities for tomorrow. This includes gold stars to pass out when someone comes up with an especially morbid idea, big bright SPEW buttons, and a muggle cell phone set to go off every five minutes (you'll yell at Snape to stop texting you). However, before you pack the phone you make sure to give your best muggle friend a call and invite him to tag along tomorrow…you tell him to bring his Harry Potter books to be signed.

Finally you practice the Imperius curse on your owl until you've got it down perfect. You want to have your fellow Death Easters greet Voldemort with a rousing chorus of "Sexy Back" by Justin Timberlake, but it'll probably take a little, erm, persuasion (they never go for any of your ideas). Now there's only one thing left, the boy…

…. Once you've taken care of that you realize you still have loads of spare time so you decide to pay Voldemort a little early morning visit. Quietly you sneak into his room and creep on over to him. Making sure he's asleep you then proceed to draw Potter glasses around his eyes and a lightning bolt scar on his forehead. Later when he wakes up and looks in the mirror you can tell him it's opposite day. Then, carefully pulling his wand out of his hand, you snap it in half. You leave it on the nightstand with a note that says:

Oops…it was the knargles.

-Luna

Now it's time to wake him up. You get really close to him…closer…closer, put your face right next to his ear, and make the loudest most obnoxious hissing noise you can manage. When he jumps out of bed (a good ten feet out of bed) and asks what in the name of Merlin you think doing, innocently you look down at you're feet and say you were trying to wake him up…in parseltounge.

Promptly you apparate out of the room. Five seconds later, you apparate back in. As you duck the flying vase he's chucked at your head you scream, "I only wanted to make sure you'd gotten up!" (Also make sure to let him know how particularly menacing he's looking this morning). You repeat this process of apparating in and out of his room until either he is fully dressed or he has started attempting to rapid fire the cruciatus curse at you with his broken wand (most likely the latter).

Finally the meeting rolls around. As planned by the time he strolls into the room you've got all his loyal Death Eaters singing (success!). While he's gasping and sputtering in frustration you conjure up a trumpet and grandly announce his presence (make sure you use his middle name, Marvalo, what is that? Some sort of laundry detergent?)

Once everyone has calmed down and taken a seat the meeting begins. As usual Lucius is the first to come up with an idea, he's such a suck up. This time it's really not all that bad of a plan (unlike "Operation Mudblood Wipeout", only a bigoted pureblood supremacist could come up with a plan that ridiculous) so you promptly tell him you think it could work. Actually it sounds pretty easy "like taking candy from a baby" you say, then you stop and stare pointedly at Voldemort "of course some of us have a harder time with that then others" you mutter under your breath, but still loud enough for him to hear. He glares daggers at you but otherwise ignores the comment.

The brainstorming proceeds but like always Voldemort quickly comes up with a snag in the plan, Dumbledore (you've asked him many times how he could possibly be afraid of dear old Dumbles, but he just tries to hex you). So again, as always, he starts to form some sort of overly extravagant and ridiculously complicated plan to keep the old wizard out of the way. Occasionally you roll your eyes and mumble things like "you're funeral", and once or twice you pat him on the back, smile, and say your so proud and that you taught him everything he knows, but he seems to be ignoring your beleaguering so you quickly become bored. Pulling out a spare bit of parchment you start to write him a note. In it you tell him all about what Snape's really been up to, and at the bottom you write,

PS: Can you sneeze? And why don't you have a cool scar?

You sign it from Lucius then fold it into a paper airplane and charm it into flying right into his head, repeatedly, until he opens it. This should really cause a ruckus.

Finally, after being stabbed in the eye multiple times, he opens the note. You watch in anticipation as he unfolds the piece of parchment and his beady red eyes run over the writing. His mouth falls open; "Severus Snape!" he bellows angrily, "is this true!"

Snape looks up surprised "What?" he questions. Voldemort crunches the note into a ball and throws it at him. Snape catches it in one hand and flattens it out on the table. His face goes stark white as his eyes roll over the words "What, I…my Lord, no NO!" he stutters, running a hand through his greasy hair. Suddenly he jumps up "Well Lucius is having an affair with Bellatrix!" he shouts, pointing a finger at the blonde man. Lucius and Bellatrix both jump up.

"That's not true!" they both shout at once.

"It is so" Snape sneers "I saw you two going out to dinner together! She's your sister-in-law, how could you?"

"Shut _up_, you filthy half blood!" Lucius roars. You sit back and admire your handy work. "Besides this has nothing to do with you being a rotten traitor!" he yells, but Snape ignores the comment.

"You've never appreciated Narcissa, and I'm sick of it!" shouts Snape.

"Just cause you could never get that foul little mudblood- "

"Don't you dare talk that way about Lily Potter!"

"I can talk about her however I want, she's DEAD!" Snape whips out his wand they start to duel.

Meanwhile Bellatrix turns to Voldemort "We just went out to dinner that one time," She pleads, bursting into tears. "It was just a friendly date, it didn't mean anything," she cries. "I can't wait for you forever, you know!" she bawls at him. "I've always loved you, but have you ever shown a sign of reciprocating my feelings? No! I've always been there for you! I went to Azkaban for you! Do you know what you did to me when you disappeared? Do you? All you had to do was leave a note 'Hey I'm going out to kill the Potters' but you couldn't even do that! You were gone for thirteen years! Do you have any idea how worried I was? And when you came back did I even get a 'Sorry I got myself nearly killed? No! You didn't even tell me you were back at first! You couldn't even trust me with that! I'd trust you with my life! I've given you life! My whole life, every second, of every minute, of every single day is dedicated to you! So yes, I got a little sick of all this! I went out on one date, but it's your fault!" She falls to the floor wrapping her arms around her head "Why can't you just love me?" she wails "Why, WHY?" She collapses into more fitful sobs.

Voldemort just sits there looking completely dumbfounded. Silently he stares in horror as he realizes his three most valuable Death Eaters have imploded. One of them is ducking the Aveda Kedavra curse, one of them, possibly a traitor, just slipping past the cruciatus, and the third is curled up in a ball on the floor inconsolably bawling her eyes out. You suppress the urge to giggle.

Scooching over to Voldemort you put your hand on his shoulder and pat it comfortingly. "It'll be alright Sir," you say, handing him a smiley face stress ball. "Just squeeze this and try to think happy thoughts."

He turns to you, a single tear trickling down his ashen face. "How am I ever going kill Harry Potter now?" he asks crestfallen. Time for the big finish.

You turn back to him. "Harry Potter, my Lord?" you ask quizzically "I killed him just earlier this morning"

His mouth falls open. "W-what?"

"Yeah," you say, smiling from ear to ear "I saw him at Hogsemede when I was out to get my morning pumpkin juice. It was like Aveda Kedavra BAM dead, just like that." He continues to stare at you in shock, his moth falling open even wider, so you go on. "What?" you ask perplexedly. "I thought you'd be happy, I mean you've been trying to do it for seven years now!"

"Happy?" he asks, standing to his feet. "You thought I'd be happy?" He's towering over you now, his eyes narrowed to slits of rage. You're starting to think maybe this wasn't such a good idea. "I am LORD VOLDEMORT! I'm planning to have "happy" removed from the English dictionary! You imbecile! You idiot! You fool!" He rages on. "You, you, ahhg! He. Was. MINE!" He screams finally, his high-pitched voice echoing off the walls. The hall falls deadly quiet, even Snape and Lucius stop their dueling. Voldemort advances towards you wand raised (apparently he was able to mend it). "No one was to touch him but me, NOBODY!"

You run out of the hall slamming the door behind you, a jet of green light narrowly missing your head. As you sprint down the hallway as fast as you can you find a tiny smile creeping it way onto your face. You really showed him didn't you? Not only were you able to annoy him to (if not over) the brink of madness with all your tomfoolery and pranks, and crush his hopes and dreams by sabotaging the meeting and strategically pitting his loyal servants against one another, but in killing Harry Potter you succeeded in making him cry!

No matter how many years you may have wasted trying to gain the praise of a man that never cared for anyone but himself, that one little teardrop was enough to buy it all back. Because you can be sure that he's the one going to be sobbing into his pillow tonight.


End file.
